Live Review: Sam Fender brings gritty lyricism and stirring guitars to Birmingham’s Utilita Arena

Sam Fender played to a packed-to-the-rafters Utilita Arena on Friday night for the Birmingham leg of his People Watching tour.

Watching the crowd joyfully sing along with the 30-year-old Geordie, it would be easy to pigeonhole Fender as the next thing in anthemic indie but that would be unfair to the complexities he displays in his craft.

Fender has come up through the ranks the hard way, starting out playing pubs and smaller venues while dealing with illness and homelessness as a young artist.

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Like a 21st century Bruce Springsteen, Fender allies gritty lyrics dealing with growing up in the working class north east with stirring guitars and choruses.

In doing so he’s built up a dedicated following which judging by the shirts on display have done as much for Newcastle United’s merch sales as Alan Shearer did in his pomp.

Support came in the form of indie band Wunderhorse, whose jangly guitars, clever lyrics and rock sensibility owe much to the influence of 90s bands such as Nirvana. Their tight 45-minute set was short on audience interaction yet was clearly met with acclaim from the crowd.

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Fender swung straight into his own set with ‘Dead Boys’ and ‘Getting Started’ before showing how much he knows how to please his audience.

Spotting a teenage lad with a sign asking to play guitar on ‘The Borders’, Fender brought the kid on stage to see what he could do.

The teenager – Toby, 18 – clearly had been practicing guitar because he didn’t sound out of place at all while playing with Fender and his backing band as they belted out the song.

The title track of Fender’s new album due out in the new year, ‘People Watching’, showcased what Fender does best.

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With black and white footage of his hometown on a big screen behind him, Fender sang of the pain of enviously watching people in the street and realising on growing older that the world wasn’t ever as great as he hoped.

It would be easy to be morose with such subject matter yet his upbeat guitar reminiscent of Bryan Adams coupled with his high tenor voice managed to turn those sad lyrics into an anthem of hope for something better.

And while the pyrotechnics and light shows played with ‘Spice’ and ‘Howdon Aldi Death Queue’ created an audio-visual spectacle, neither diminished the impact of Fender’s lyrics which talk of the drug and his struggles with illness.

An excellent rendition of the Clash’s ‘London Calling’ with guitarist Dean Thompson showing off a good impression of Joe Strummer’s vocals preceded a closing quartet of anthems concluding with smash hit ‘Seventeen Going Under’.

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Fender started his encore by singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to drummer Drew Michael while his band brought out a cake, before finishing with ‘Hypersonic Missiles’, the song Fender describes as “what got him into this mess in the first place”

Despite being one of his oldest songs, it’s clearly still a crowd favourite and was met with the most frenzied jumping around of the night from the crowd even before the dry ice, confetti cannons and fireworks were released into the arena air.

Even then, the night wasn’t truly over. As the band walked off stage and the crowds dispersed, it was easy to hear the almost football like “woah” post-chorus being sung into the freezing Birmingham night.

It proved once again just how far Fender has come from those nights playing music in between working shifts at a pub.

Sam Fender played:

Dead Boys

Getting Started

The Borders

Wild Long Lie

All Is on My Side

Nostalgia’s Lie

Will We Talk?

Arm’s Length

People Watching

Spice

Howdon Aldi Death Queue

London Calling (The Clash cover)

Get You Down

Spit of You

The Dying Light

Seventeen Going Under

Hypersonic Missiles

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